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Thursday, October 25, 2012

Fossil fuel warriors in charge of ConDems energy policy

As
the first cold blast of winter heads down from the Arctic, more than five
million UK
households cannot afford to heat their homes to the standard required for good
health and comfort.

And now that the unscrupulous cartel of big energy corporations has slapped
a 9% increase on fuel bills – the average bill is now over £1,300 – the number
of people in fuel poverty will soar.

David Cameron talked big at his Party’s conference,
claiming the government would force the energy giants to offer customers the lowest
price tariff but now rushes to change his tune. The best the Coalition can
offer is a letter from the supplier telling the customer what their lowest –
but still unaffordable – tariff is.

UK governments of all stripes
have consistently refused to regulate for high energy efficiency leaving the
market to decide. The result is most houses being built in the UK even today, wouldn’t get off the drawing
board in Scandinavia.

The
much proclaimed Green New Deal replaces the former grant programme with loans
at high interest rates offset by small amounts of cash back for measurable
energy savings. The paltry sum set aside is £200m - £125 will go for loans and
£25m on publicity. It will be used up in about three months.

The
truth is Cameron’s “greenest ever government” has been taken over by the
dirtiest fossil fuel warriors.

Owen
Paterson, the new Minister for Energy, is a climate change sceptic who
described the potential for gas fracking as "one unexpected and
potentially huge windfall". His policy advisor is a former lobbyist for
the Australian fossil fuel industry.

Ian
Taylor, boss of energy trader Vitol, gave the Tories more than £500,000. Viton
is a major shareholder in companies involved in hydraulic fracturing (fracking
and coal bed methane extraction, another dirty business.

Lord
Browne, the former chief executive of BP is a government energy adviser. He is chairman
of Cuadrilla, the UK’s main
“frackers”, and is on the board of North Sea
deep water oil explorer Riverstone.

Cameron’s
new advisor on energy policy is Ben Moxham, who worked for Browne at BP and
Riverstone.

Vitol
is a major shareholder in Dart Energy, which will soon begin coal bed methane
extraction at Airth, on the River Forth. This filthy technology will start with
22 CBM wells but as many as 600 could be on the cards. It is just “the
beginning of a nightmarish industrial transformation for the UK as a whole”,
says Elsie Walker of campaign group Frack
Off.

Do
you get the picture? Energy policy in the UK is being written by the fossil
fuel industry, in its own profit-driven interests and has nothing to do with
keeping consumer prices low or tackling climate change.

The government argues that getting at new sources of
fossil fuel is essential to keep prices down. But the exact opposite is the
case.

Systems
such as “fracking” or coal bed methane capture or tar sand extraction, are only
now economic (profitable) because of the rising price of gas as easy to access
supplies run out. When gas was plentiful and cheap, they were not viable.

A recent report
from IMF on the future of oil notes that keeping oil production going at
current levels will bring about a doubling of the cost in the next decade. The
report speaks of “economic peak oil”, a point beyond which importer economies cannot
sustain production and there is runaway inflation.

The IMF calls it a "shock" that will have
"large and persistent" macro-economic effects and it calls on
governments to invest heavily in alternative energy sources.

But
these arguments will fall on deaf ears because government energy policy is
about the corporations and the profits.

This
winter, more than 20,000 people in the UK will die from cold and many more
become ill or get into debt. It is time to put all energy resources into a new
commons and end the corporations’ right to profit from such misery.

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